Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Organic Aerial Vehicles (OAVs) used in military, law enforcement, surveillance and security operations present particularly challenging requirements for power, weight, fuel consumption, vibration, starting and electrical generation. Designing appropriate systems for such applications are subject to many challenging constraints. For example, the vehicles must be designed to have minimal visibility, high power to weight ratio and high thrust to weight ratio, low noise production, low vibration, fuel efficiency, long flight times, and mechanical simplicity for serviceability in the field.
Satisfying the foregoing constraints largely depends on the nature of the engine for thrust generation, the mechanism for lift, and the system for power generation. Unfortunately, while existing efforts might satisfactorily address any given constraint, those efforts have failed to provide a satisfactory solution for multiple constraints.
It has been determined that for safety and logistics in military operations that in the future fuels will be restricted to standard DOD heavy fuels, such as JP8.
Further, different systems and applications require different power and electrical outputs suitable for a particular purpose. It has been determined that engines having a range of power output from 1.5 hp to 35 hp would have great utility for many applications, such as to power UAVs and OAVs.
Providing an inventory of engines of various sizes and capacities is prohibitive. There is a need to provide a wide range of engine power outputs while maintaining desired weight, packaging and field logistics demands.
Accordingly, there is a substantial need for aerial vehicles and other applications with improved engine and electrical power generating systems. A modular approach to accommodate differing power requirements is also needed.